Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America's Vietnam

by Fredrik Logevall

  28 Douglas Porch, The French Secret Services: A History of French Intelligence from the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995), 323–24.

  29 See, e.g., L’Observateur, May 8, 1953; Jacques Despuech, Le trafic des piastres (Paris: Deux Rives, 1953). And see Hugues Tertrais, La piastre et le fusil: Le coût de la guerre d’Indochine 1945–1954 (Paris: Comité pour l’histoire économique et financière de la France, 2002), 133–50.

  30 Ellen J. Hammer, The Struggle for Indochina, 1940–1955 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1955), 300–1; NYT, May 20, 1953.

  31 CIA Office of National Estimates, “Staff Memorandum No. 349: French Political Developments,” April 30, 1953, NSC Staff Papers, Box 12, PSB Central Files, Eisenhower Library.

  32 State Department memcon, “Metropolitan French Opinions and Attitudes on Indochina War,” May 4, 1953, NSC Staff Papers, Box 12, PSB Central Files, Eisenhower Library. The poll results were not published in the paper until early the following year. Declared the headline: “65% de Francais souhaiterait le retrait des troupes ou une négociation.” Le Monde, February 24, 1954. On the growing conviction in French official circles in this period that the war was ruining France economically, see Tertrais, La piastre et le fusil.

  33 Paris to FO, May 30, 1953, FO 371/106752, TNA.

  34 Both books were published in 1952.

  35 The Paris-Presse article is described in NYT, May 9, 1953. As the year progressed, Le Monde contained more and more articles critical of the war. A Gaullist deputy complained in a letter in the paper: “Indochina resembles a ship without a captain.… We cannot continue to bog ourselves down in a war without end without a goal.” M. Raymond Dronne, “Pour quoi nous combattons,” Le Monde, May 9, 1953.

  36 “La France peut supporter la vérité,” L’Express, May 16, 1953; Edward Rice-Maximin, Accommodation and Resistance: The French Left, Indochina and the Cold War (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1986), 136.

  37 Letourneau quoted in Jacques Dalloz, The War in Indo-China, 1945–1954 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1990), 163. Dillon comment in Paris to SecState, July 2, 1953, in FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:631–32.

  38 Paris to SecState, June 17, 1953, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:610–12.

  CHAPTER 15: Navarre’s American Plan

  1 Jules Roy, The Battle of Dienbienphu, trans. Robert Baldick (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 7; Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (New York: Viking, 1983), 204.

  2 Navarre was aware of the grumbling. He later wrote that “nothing in my career prepared me for this post. I had never served in the Far East and knew of the Indochina problem only what every more or less well-informed Frenchman knew.” Henri Navarre, Agonie de l’Indochine (Paris: Plon, 1956), 2.

  3 According to French figures (as given to the British), “total French Union and National” forces in May 1953, when Navarre took command, were: regular armies, 316,438; air forces, 11, 394; navies, 10,890; army suppletifs (auxiliaries), 104,113; paramilitary, 75,380; interpreters, etc., 5,468; for a total of 523,683. “Appendix B,” May 4, 1953, FO 371/106777, TNA. Viet Minh assessments of enemy strength in this period are similar. See Vo Nguyen Giap, Dien Bien Phu: Rendezvous with History (Hanoi: Gioi, 2004), 9.

  4 Roy, Battle of Dienbienphu, 12.

  5 Navarre is quoted in Time, June 29, 1953, and in James Cable, The Geneva Conference of 1954 on Indochina (London: Macmillan, 1986), 22. For Navarre’s reaction to being asked to take the Indochina appointment, see his Agonie de l’Indochine, 1–3. For his awareness of the size of the task, see p. 67.

  6 Pierre Rocolle, Pourquoi Dien Bien Phu? (Paris: Flammarion, 1968), 21; Paul Ély, L’Indochine dans la tourmente (Paris: Plon, 1964), 25.

  7 David Halberstam, The Fifties (New York: Villard, 1993), 400.

  8 George W. Allen, None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001), 46–47; Ronald H. Spector, Advice and Support: The Early Years of the U.S. Army in Vietnam, 1941–1960 (Washington, D.C.: Center for Military History, 1985), 175; Hugues Tertrais, “Stratégie et decisions,” in Pierre Journoud and Hugues Tertrais, eds., 1954–2004: La bataille de Dien Bien Phu, entre histoire et mémoire (Paris: Société française d’histoire d’outre-mer, 2004), 30–31; Pierre Journoud and Hugues Tertrais, Paroles de Dien Bien Phu: Les survivants témoignent (Paris: Tallandier, 2004), 46–51.

  9 Navarre, Agonie de l’Indochine, 28. And see here Ambassador Heath’s comments, in FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:628. He cabled Washington: “Navarre’s principles reflect … O’Daniel’s impact here.”

  10 O’Daniel to Radford, June 30, 1953, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:625; Spector, Advice and Support, 175. Navarre returned to Paris to present the plan at a meeting of the National Defense Committee on July 24, where it won endorsement. See Rocolle, Pourquoi Dien Bien Phu?, 51–53. On O’Daniel’s insistence on the need for a greater application of military force, see also Saigon to FO, July 2, 1953, FO 371/106761, TNA.

  11 Bernard B. Fall, “Post-Mortems on Dien Bien Phu: Review Article,” Far Eastern Survey 27, no. 10 (October 1958): 156.

  12 Memcon, July 12, 1953, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:656–67.

  13 “Note générale sur la politique française en Indochine,” July 21, 1953, Box 31, René Mayer Papers, Series 363AP, AN.

  14 Paris to FO, August 11, 1953, FO 474/7, TNA; Kathryn C. Statler, Replacing France: The Origins of American Intervention in Vietnam (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2007), 73.

  15 Quoted in Dorothy Fall, Bernard Fall: Memories of a Soldier-Scholar (Washington, D.C.: Potomac, 2006), 55–81.

  16 Bernard Fall, Street Without Joy: Indochina at War 1946–1954 (Harrisburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 1961), 255–56. See also Fall, Bernard Fall, 55–81.

  17 Fall, Bernard Fall, 67.

  18 Bernard B. Fall, “Insurgency Indicators,” Military Review 46 (April 1966), 4.

  19 Fall, Bernard Fall, 67–70.

  20 “Appendix D,” April 11, 1953, FO 371/106775, TNA.

  21 Quoted in Newsweek, April 20, 1953.

  22 Dennis Duncan, “The Year of the Snake,” Life, August 3, 1953. On the subsequent dispute, see Bonnet to Bidault, July 24, 1953, Dossier 1, AN 457 AP 52, AN; and Saigon cables 391 and 461 in Record Group 59, 751 G.00/9–353, 9–1653, NARA; and C. D. Jackson daily summary, August 5, 1953, Box 68, C. D. Jackson Papers, Eisenhower Library. See also James Waite, “The End of the First Indochina War: An International History,” Ph.D. dissertation, Ohio University, 2005, 98–99.

  23 Robert E. Herzstein, Henry R. Luce, Time, and the American Crusade in Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 183–84.

  24 On the gap between the information the Luce magazines received and their published version of events, see ibid., 182–83.

  25 Time, September 28, 1953.

  26 See, for example, the editorials on March 28, 1953, June 5, 1953, and October 2, 1953, and the interpretive articles by reporter Hanson W. Baldwin.

  27 United States–Vietnam Relations 1945–1967: Study Prepared by the Department of Defense (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1971), 9:46.

  28 The Pentagon Papers: The Defense Department History of Decisionmaking on Vietnam, Senator Gravel edition (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), 1:591–92.

  29 Washington to FO, August 1953, FO 371/103497.

  30 Paris to State, July 22, 1953, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:695. And see Spector, Advice and Support, 176.

  31 Knowland press conference, September 16, 1953, “1953 Far East trip,” Series 364, Box 3, Nixon Pre-Presidential Papers, NARA–Laguna Niguel.

  32 Don Oberdorfer, Senator Mansfield: The Extraordinary Life of a Great American Statesman and Diplomat (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian, 2003), 110–11; NYT, February 21, 1953. The senator was quoted in a front-page story concerning the prospect of increased U.S. aid to the war effort. The kicker under the headline read: “Mansfield Cites Urgency.”

/>   33 Oberdorfer, Senator Mansfield, 117; Edward Miller, “Vision, Power and Agency: The Ascent of Ngô Dình Diêm, 1945–54,” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 35 (October 2004): 446–47.

  34 Warner quoted in Oberdorfer, Senator Mansfield, 112.

  35 Mansfield, “Indochina,” report prepared for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee of a mission to Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1953). See also Robert Mann, A Grand Delusion: America’s Descent into Vietnam (New York: Basic, 2001), 120–21.

  36 Time, August 10, 1953.

  37 Bui Diem with David Chanoff, In the Jaws of History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), 79.

  38 Ibid., 79–80; Bao Dai, Le dragon d’Annam (Paris: Plon, 1980), 315.

  39 Saigon to State, October 17, 1953, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:828–30; Saigon to State, October 18, 1953, FRUS, 1952–1954, Indochina, XIII, 1:834–36.

  40 Newsweek, November 2, 1953; Jacques Dalloz, The War in Indo-China, 1945–1954 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1990), 166.

  41 Time, November 9, 1953; Paris to FO, October 2, 1953, FO 371/106770, TNA.

  42 Saigon to FO, November 10, 1953, FO 474/7, TNA.

  43 Ibid.; Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978), 122; “Conversations of Vice President Nixon with Bao Dai,” “1953 Far Eastern Trip,” Series 366, Box 2, Nixon Pre-Presidential Papers, NARA–Laguna Niguel.

  44 Nixon, RN, 122–25.

  45 Nixon speech in Hanoi, November 3, 1953, “1953 Far Eastern Trip,” Series 366, Box 2, Nixon Pre-Presidential Papers, NARA–Laguna Niguel; Saigon to FO, November 10, 1953, FO 474/7, TNA.

  46 Saigon to FO, November 10, 1953, FO 474/7, TNA.

  47 Memcon, NSC meeting, December 24, 1953, Box 5, Ann Whitman File, NSC Series, Eisenhower Library.

  48 “Vice President Nixon’s Report to Department Officers on His Trip to the Near and Far East,” January 8, 1954, Box 69, NSC Staff Papers, OCB Central File Series, Eisenhower Library.

  49 Ibid.

  CHAPTER 16: Arena of the Gods

  1 Bernard B. Fall, Hell in a Very Small Place: The Siege of Dien Bien Phu (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1966), 22–23.

  2 Raoul Salan, Mémoires: Fin d’un empire, vol. 2: Le Viêt-minh mon adversaire (Paris: Presses de la cité, 1971), 417.

  3 For an interpretation that emphasizes the importance of opium in French decision making, see Douglas Porch, The French Secret Services: A History of French Intelligence from the Dreyfus Affair to the Gulf War (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1995), 319–38.

  4 In 1955, following bitter charges and countercharges by Navarre and Cogny in the press, there would be an official government commission of inquiry into Dien Bien Phu, chaired by General Georges Catroux. Top commanders testified, as did colonels and unit commanders. Pierre Pellissier, Diên Biên Phu: 20 novembre 1953–7 mai 1954 (Paris: Perrin, 2004), 548–68.

  5 “Comité de defense nationale du 24 juillet 1953; Extrait du process verbal no. 821/ CND du 18 septembre 1953,” 10 H 179, Service historique de l’armée de terre. See also Joseph Laniel, Le drame indochinois (Paris: Plon, 1957), 20–22; Pierre Charpy, “ ‘Pourquoi je ne me suis pas suicidé,’ par le général Navarre, responsable de Dien Bien Phu,” Nouveau Candide, October 17, 1963; Général René Cogny, “La libre confession du général Cogny,” L’Express, November 21, 1963; and L’Express, December 6, 1963.

  6 Georges Catroux, Deux actes du drame indochinois (Paris: Plon, 1959), 168–69; Alphonse Juin, Le Viêt Minh, mon adversaire (Paris: Plon, 1956), 237. The text of the treaty is in Press and Information Division, French Embassy, Washington, D.C., Indochinese Affairs 1 (February 1954): 25–28.

  7 Georges Boudarel and Francois Caviglioli, “Comment Giap a faille perdre la bataille de Dien Bien Phu,” Nouvel Observateur, April 8, 1983. I thank Chris Goscha for drawing this illuminating article to my attention.

  8 Henri Navarre, Agonie de l’Indochine (Paris: Plon, 1956), 121.

  9 On Paris being informed of the operation after the event, see Laniel, Le drame indochinois, 36. On the November 20 operation, see also Pierre Journoud and Hugues Tertrais, Paroles de Dien Bien Phu: Les survivants témoignent (Paris: Tallandier, 2004), 67–74.

  10 Chen Jian, Mao’s China and the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 132; William J. Duiker, Ho Chi Minh: A Life (New York: Hyperion, 2000), 448.

  11 These figures from BMA Saigon to War Office, June 7, 1953, FO 371/106748, TNA. See also Taquey to Craig, May 14, 1953, Box 12, NSC Staff Papers, PSB Central Files, Eisenhower Library.

  12 Dang Huu Loc (Military History Institute of Vietnam chief editor), Lich Su Quan Doi Nhan Dan Viet Nam [History of the People’s Army of Vietnam], 4th printing, with additions and corrections (Hanoi: People’s Army Publishing House, 1994), 387. See also Cao Pha, Nhung Ky Uc Khong Bao Gio Quen [Memories I Will Never Forget] (Hanoi: People’s Army Publishing House, 2006), 84–86. I thank Merle Pribbenow for his translations. See also Vo Nguyen Giap, Dien Bien Phu: Rendezvous with History (Hanoi: Gioi, 2004), 13–26.

  13 Le Kinh Lich (chief editor), Tran Danh Ba Muoi Nam: Ky Su Lich Su, Tap 1 [The Thirty Year Battle: A Historical Report, vol. 1] (People’s Army Publishing House, 1995), 593. I thank Merle Pribbenow for his translation. See also Trinh Vuong Hong, “Dien Bien Phu: A Historical Inevitability,” in Dien Bien Phu: History, Impressions, Memoirs (Hanoi: Gioi, 2004), 49.

  14 Tran Danh Ba Muoi Nam, 593.

  15 See here also Vu Quang Hien, Tim hieu chu truong doi ngoai cua Dang thoi ky 1945–1954 (Hanoi: Nha xuat ban Chinh tri quoc gia, 2005), 169–701; Pierre Asselin, “The DRVN and the 1954 Geneva Conference: New Evidence and Perspectives from Vietnam,” unpublished paper in author’s possession, p. 5.

  16 Tran Danh Ba Muoi Nam, 593.

  17 Bernard B. Fall, “Indochina: The Last of the War,” Military Review, December 1956; Pierre Rocolle, Pourquoi Dien Bien Phu? (Paris: Flammarion, 1968), 169–76.

  18 Lich Su Quan Doi Nhan Dan Viet Nam, 393.

  19 “Dinh Cao Chien Cong Tinh Bao Thoi Chong Phat” [The Peak of Intelligence Success During the Resistance War Against the French], Quan Doi Nhan Dan [People’s Army], October 21, 2005, at www.​quandoinhandan.​org.​vn/​sknc/​?id=1587​&subject=​8, last accessed June 5, 2009. I thank Merle Pribbenow for drawing this article to my attention and for his translation.

  20 Rocolle, Pourquoi Dien Bien Phu?, 206; Martin Windrow, The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam (Cambridge, Mass.: Da Capo, 2004), 257.

  21 Jules Roy, La bataille de Diên Biên Phu (Paris: René Julliard, 1963), 83–86.

  22 Windrow, Last Valley, 258–59.

  23 George W. Allen, None So Blind: A Personal Account of the Intelligence Failure in Vietnam (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2001), 51–52.

  24 Chen Jian, Mao’s China, 133–34. Chen maintains that the Chinese played a determining role in the decision.

  25 Quan Doi Nhan Dan [People’s Army] newspaper supplement, “Su Kien va Nhan Chung” [Events and Witnesses], Special issue no. 1 commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, June 12, 1953. I thank Merle Pribbenow for providing me with a translated version of this article.

  26 Ibid.; Giap, Rendezvous with History, 47–48.

  27 Lich Su Quan Doi Nhan Dan Viet Nam, 1:387–95; Christopher E. Goscha, “Building Force: Asian Origins of Vietnamese Military Science (1950–54),” Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 34 (2003): 556.

  28 Ilya V. Gaiduk, Confronting Vietnam: Soviet Policy Toward the Indochina Conflict, 1954–1963 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003), 14; Duiker, Ho Chi Minh, 449.

  29 See Chen, Mao’s China, 167–70.

  30 Ho Chi Minh, Toan Tap I, no. 6, pp. 494–96, as cited in Duiker, Ho Chi Minh, 451.

  31 Party studies quoted in Pierre Asselin, “The DRVN and the 1954 Geneva Conference: New Evidence and Perspectives from Vietnam,” unpublished paper, in author’s possession.

&n
bsp; 32 Quoted in Allan W. Cameron, ed., Viet-Nam Crisis: A Documentary History, 2 vols. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1971), 1:217–18. See also Vu Quang Hien, Tim hieu chu truong doi ngoai, 171.

  33 Ho Chi Minh, Selected Works, 4 vols. (Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1961–1962), 3:408–10; Pellissier, Diên Biên Phu, 116–17; James Cable, The Geneva Conference of 1954 on Indochina (London: Macmillan, 1986), 35.

  34 Ho Chi Minh, “Report to the Assembly of the DRV,” December 1–4, 1953, in Ho Chi Minh on Revolution: Selected Writings, 1920–1966, ed. Bernard B. Fall (New York: Praeger, 1967), 258–69.

  35 General Hoang Van Thai, Tran Danh Ba Muoi Nam, 730.

  36 Ho Chi Minh, Selected Works, 3:431.

  37 Edward Rice-Maximin, Accommodation and Resistance: The French Left, Indochina and the Cold War (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1986), 139.

  38 Cable, Geneva Conference, 35.

  39 Le Monde, December 1, 1953.

  40 Cable, Geneva Conference, 36; Jean Lacouture, Pierre Mendès France, trans. George Holock (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1984), 200.

  41 “Situation en Indochine de 1 au 9 Décembre 1953,” F60 3038, AN. Tam is quoted in Le Monde, December 4, 1953, as cited in Waite, “End of the First Indochina War,” 73.

  42 C.D. Jackson notes, “Bermuda Commentary,” December 1953, Box 68, C.D. Jackson Papers, Eisenhower Library.

  43 Ibid.; Sir Evelyn Shuckburgh diary, as quoted in Cable, Geneva Conference, 37.

  44 Lord Moran, Winston Churchill: The Struggle for Survival 1940–1965 (London: Constable, 1966), 503–12; Cable, Geneva Conference, 37; David Carlton, Anthony Eden: A Biography (New York: HarperCollins, 1986), 335–37; John Colville, The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries, 1939–1955 (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1985), 643.

  45 See Memcon, December 4, 1953, FRUS, 1952–1954, Western European Security, V:1739.

  46 Colville, Fringes of Power, 683, as quoted in Kevin Ruane, “Anthony Eden, British Diplomacy, and the Origins of the Geneva Conference of 1954,” Historical Journal 37 (1994): 155.